Kurdish-Iraqi government workers to rally over 'illegal' pay offer

Public workers, teachers, and university students in the Iraqi-Kurdistan Region will hold demonstrations on Saturday to demand an unconditional rise in pay and monthly stipends that have been "illegally" cut by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The KRG, which has run the semi-autonomous northern Iraqi region since 1991, had halted pay rises to all public sector employees, without permission from the region's parliament, when oil prices plummeted and Kurdish fighters were battling the Islamic State group in 2016.

The government resumed pay rises to the Kurdish security and Peshmerga forces early this year.

The KRG recently announced it had decided to resume "conditional pay rises" for civilian employees serving in the public sector, sparking fury from workers.

"While we were anticipating the KRG to resume pay rises, which have been halted according to an illegal decision over the past six years, the authorities want to illegally impose conditional pay rises," KRG public sector employees told a press conference, attended by The New Arab, in Sulaimaniyah city on Thursday.

"We think silence would only produce more tyranny - thus, we have decided to organise wide demonstrations by Saturday." 

Adil Hassan, a Kurdish teacher and one of the organisers of the upcoming demonstration, told TNA that activists had not asked local authorities for a protest license and hoped Kurdish security forces would not use violence against them. 

Dozens of protesters and innocent civilians, including children, have been killed by Kurdish security forces mainly militias belonging to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).  

"Our main aim of the peaceful demonstration is to reject the conditional pay rise decision by the KRG and ask for the resumption of unconditional pay rise. We think the conditional pay rise is stealing from our salaries," Hassan said.

"We would soon try to file a lawsuit against the KRG at the Iraqi Supreme Federal Court." 

Nearly 1.5 million people are on the KRG public sector payroll, most of them are cadres and members of the ruling parties. Critics say they are hired with little or no real expertise and often fail to come to the office.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of graduates are unemployed, amid rising unemployment rates and poverty.

Iraqi and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region law states that public sector employees are entitled to a pay rise every four years. The KRG does not have the legal authority to change those laws or bypass the Kurdistan parliament. 

University students on Thursday threatened to resume their demonstrations early next week if the Kurdish security forces do not free nearly 105 University of Sulaimaniyah students who were detained after taking part in recent protests demanding an increase in their monthly stipends.

Organisers of the protests told reporters that security forces beat students and held them in solitary confinement.

Kurdish authorities sentenced hundreds of journalists, teachers, and activists from Erbil and Duhok provinces to prison in the wake of wide anti-government protests over the last three years.